Datafication, algorithms, social media and their various assemblages enable massive connective processes, enriching personal interaction and amplifying the scope and scale of public networks. At the same time, surveillance capitalists (Zuboff 2019) and the social quantification sector (Couldry and Mejias 2019) are committed to monetizing every aspect of human communication, all of which threaten ideal social qualities, such as togetherness and connection. This special issue brings together a range of voices and provocations around ‘the social’, all of which aim to critically interrogate mediated human connection and their contingent socialities. Conventional methods may no longer be adequate, and we must rethink not only the fabric of the social but the very tools we use to make sense of our changing social formations. This special issue raises shared concerns with what the social means today, unpicking and rethinking the seams between digitization and social life that characterize today’s digital age.